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Planting Inspiration – a thought

I wonder sometimes about the planting design process of other designers. Some always design the “bones” of the garden first and work their way down to smaller plants, others begin with a point of inspiration, a style, and build a garden around that concept. I seem to work in more than one direction at a time. Occasionally a garden will tell me what it wants to be, sometimes I have to ponder longer to find its voice.

Whatever happens on a project, though, I maintain a substantial image library. I recently visited Filoli earlier this month and took the photo above of Crocosmia and Hydrangeas planted together. I recognize that not everybody would respond favorably to this combination based solely on the colors, but seeing them together like that gave me the idea for this post – what if you compared several cultivars of Hydrangea with a variety Crocosmias (in a mix-and-match format)? What interesting planting combinations would arise? Would others find Crocosmia combined with Hydrangea attractive then?